Water levels dropping - Dennis Centis

All stations, all stations. Spring may have given us a start-stop stutter step but it looks like the weather has finally gotten itself back on track. Near normal temperatures are back, the Sudbury Yacht Club is putting their docks in for the season and most of the boaters I know in Little Current are getting their vessels ready for launch day.

Azzurro has been resting comfortably in her cradle, and now it’s time to rouse my beauty from her sleep.

The spring ritual for me is simple. I have my lists, but the short form goes like this. A new coat of bottom paint, a couple of coats of wax and she’ll be ready to go in the water. Then it’s a full weekend of interior cleaning and a good deck wash before we reinstall the cockpit enclosure and hoist the sails. All this happens in a busy marina with a dozen or so other boat friends who are all doing the same thing.

Whenever someone yells out “break time,” it’s an excuse to grab some pints and talk about the new boating season ahead.

Most of these talks tend to be about the newest boating hardware or how we hope to do in the upcoming club races. Fun stuff essentially. However, in the last few years, more often than not, these discussions have revolved around a more pressing topic that has gripped the attention of Great Lakes boaters — water levels.

This year will be no exception. While we did see some recovery in water levels last season, it doesn’t look so good this year. We really didn’t get that much snow over the winter and the rainfall to date this spring has been below average, so I have to tell you that I am very apprehensive about what kind of water levels we will experience on the Great Lakes this year.

Presently, the levels are just slightly above what we had last year at this same time. To the novice, that might seem positive, but I don’t think so. The early thaw may have bumped the water levels for the time being, but the lack of a deep snow pack will come back to haunt us.

From now to the late fall, it looks like we will be relying on rainfall to keep up the levels. As this latest La Niña event slowly fades, the long-term predictions are pointing to lower than average amounts in northern Ontario. I guess time will tell, but I know a lot of boaters who are nervous.

The lake levels have always fluctuated, but this downward trend has been going on for more than 10 years. While there has been some action by various levels of government on both sides of the lakes, I feel no one has really grabbed a hold of this issue. As a result, it appears to have been relegated to the realm of regional issues or a sidebar in climate change discussions. This is a pity.

While I may not be qualified to discuss the science behind the hows and whys, as a person who has traveled the width and breadth of a number of our Great Lakes, I’ve come to believe that as people who love the water, we need to galvanize around this issue.

Until next month, this is Capt’n D clearing to channel 16.

Dennis Centis is a member of the Little Current Yacht Club, and has chartered bodies of water around the world, including the Mediterrenean, the Bahamas and Caribbean, as well as the North Channel and Georgian Bay.
 
Posted by Heather Green-Oliver